The Scientific Attitude

• Scientific approach that is skeptical and open-minded
• To shift away from illusions to reality, one must use Smart thinking or critical thinking: thinking that does not blindly accept things, but approaches with skepticism and examines the evidence carefully; Ask how did they know, on guts and instinct? Are the evidence biased?
• However, must remember to have humility as too extreme would be stubbornness

The Limits of Intuition and Common Sense

• Intuition often ends up nowhere
• Tend to use a lot hindsight bias: tendency to believe that one would have known it after the results are shown;
• Seems like common sense;  The answer was right there and look how obvious it was
• Experience it usually when looking back on history; eg. Glen Clark and the fast ferries
• Humans tend to be overconfident, think we know more than we actually do (probably result of self-serving bias)
• Hindsight causes us to be overconfident as we believe we would have picked the answer when the results are in front of us

The Scientific Method

• Scientific theory: explanation using set of principles to organise/predict observations
• No matter how good theory sounds, must put it to test
• Must imply testable prediction = hypothesis
• Beware of bias when testing
• Good experiment can be replicated: the experiment can be repeated and would yield constant results; done with a different group of people or by a different person ending with constant results
• Theory useful if:

1. effectively organises range of observations
2. implies clear predictions

• Case study: research method where one person is studied in depth to find universal principles (things that apply to all)
• Drawback is that the individual being studied could be atypical, results not universally contained
• Survey: research method to get the self-reported attitudes/behaviours of people
• Looks at cases less depth and wording of question affects the response given (framing)Tend to hang around group similar to us so using them as study is wrong
• False consensus effect: tendency to overestimate other’s agreement with us; eg. Vegetarians believe larger amount of pop. is vegetarian than meat-eaters
• Population: all the cases in the group being studied
• To make a good sample, use random sampling: sample that gives each case a good chance of being studied to ensure results within range
• Naturalistic observation: observing and recording behaviour in natural settings with any control on situation
• Like case study & survey,  doesn’t explain behaviour
• When finding a trait that accompanies another, not resulting effect, but correlation: the way 2 factors vary together and how well one predicts the other
• Positive correlation: direct relationship where factors increase or decrease together
• Negative correlation: inverse relationship where one factor goes up while one goes down
• Does not explain cause, simply show relationship between factors
• Illusory correlation: perceiving correlation when none exist; Notice random coincidences as not random, rather as correlated

Experiment

• To isolate cause & effect, conduct experiments
• Experimental condition: condition that exposes subjects to treatment
• Control condition: condition that serves as a comparison to see effects of treatment on experimental condition subjects
• Use random assignment: assigning subjects to experimental/control groups randomly to ensure no bias
• Independent variable: experimental factor being manipulated and studied (by itself, alone, no need to depend on something)  * x-axis
• Dependent variable: experimental factor that depends on independent variable and changes in response to it * y- axis
• Placebo: an inert substance/condition that maybe administered instead of a presumed active agent
• Double-blind procedure: procedure in which the experimenter and the subject noth don't know which treatment is given